Damaged

Summary:“I better dream if I have to struggle”
Story of 19 year old Mary Alice Brandon

Notes:
Disclaimer- i own nothing
Story is finished, so posting should be done regularly :) i started this last winter and haven't told a single person about it until a couple of months ago-which was hard for me, as you can imagine :) i finished two days ago

1. Chapter 1

~As darkness quickly steals the lightthat shined within her eyesshe slowly swallows all her fearand soothes her mind with lieswell all she wants and all she needsare reasons to survivea day in which the sun will takeher artificial light.... her light~ Paradise, Vanessa Carlton

There were bars on her window, but at least she had one. Are the bars to keep us from going out, or to keep people from coming in? She didn’t know the answer.

Part of her hoped that they were to keep other people out, that way she wouldn’t have to face the fact that her family had not come to visit her in the whole 8 years she had been in this horrifying place. But she knew why her family hadn’t come in so long; they thought she was an odd…crazy…delirious girl. And so she had to keep filling her mind with useless lies so that she had some reason to fight and survive.

A small tear escaped her eye, sliding down her face slowly like the rain drops on the window. Suddenly an image ran through her mind, blocking anything else she was thinking or seeing out-

It was Dr. Sacks; he was tapping her on the shoulder to get her attention while she stared out the window, and a small pitiful smile was placed on his pale face as she turned around. He looked at the tear that escaped her eye, and the small smile that had rested on his lips vanished quickly.

Alice made a gasping sound before coming back to reality, escaping her reverie. She shook her head slightly, as if that may help clear her mind. She had a premonition, or a vision. She continued to sit there, now waiting for Dr. Sacks to come from behind her.

She had started getting premonitions when she was around nine years old, and her sister six.

Cynthia was playing with her small little ball with Mary Alice, when it suddenly rolled down the driveway, into the street. Cynthia was headed to go get it, being a six year old she didn’t have that much common sense. But Mary Alice had known better then to go after it in the street, and she was heading to stop her little sister when suddenly she froze. It was almost like a motion picture that went through her mind, one where Cynthia was running into the street and a car was coming fast towards her, completely unaware of the little child that was about to be hit.

Little Mary Alice didn’t know what it was at the time, but after snapping back into the real world, she ran after Cynthia and grabbed her by the back of her dress, yanking on it so that she would move out of the street. Mary Alice had done it just in time so that the car missed them by inches. She had thought it was nothing but her imagination, that whatever the little ‘motion picture’ inside her mind was just the outcome of adrenaline inside her body.

But that theory changed when she had another vision a month later, at her tenth birthday party.

In this one, the maids in her house were cooking, when the food caught fire, sending flames onto the kitchen cabinets. The flames licked the kitchen and swallowed it whole, sending heavy black smoke, looking like death itself, up into the air.

Mary Alice had gotten scared, and ran to the kitchen, away from her family and friends. When a maid was about to light the stove, Mary Alice screamed for her to stop. She had gotten scolded by her parents for screaming, and had gotten a chiding look from the maids. She had no choice but to explain that the house would catch on fire.

The maids simply said that that was silly and that she had no proof, until the house did catch on fire-just like Mary Alice’s vision.

The damage wasn’t bad, they had gotten the fire out in time to save most of the kitchen, but everyone was in shock. That was nothing compared to how little 10 year old Mary Alice felt. She knew that her small motion pictures weren’t just inside her head and playing tricks on her. They were real. They weren’t normal. They were visions of the future.

Now, back in her present day, Mary Alice still sat on the floor with her knees tucked in, rolling into a small ball. She wasn’t at all surprised when there was a small tap on her shoulder. She turned around and saw, just like in her vision, Dr. Sacks. His faint smile vanished from sight once he saw the tears resting on her cheeks.

“Alice,” he said to her (he had always called her Alice, from the beginning), “wipe those tears away. Everything is going to be just fine.” He said to her. Dr. Sacks was her only friend-or only sane friend- here at the asylum. He was younger than most doctors here, a little older then Mary Alice herself. He knew that Mary Alice wasn’t using witchcraft and wasn’t crazy. It seemed like he was the only one who knew. If only everyone knew, Mary Alice thought.

“I saw you coming.” she said to him, whispering as she wiped the tears off of her face.

“You’re still having visions.” He stated rather then asked.

She nodded, “They won’t go away. They can’t go away.” She told him in her high soprano voice.

“With the treatments we are giving you they should-”

“Sorry for interrupting, Dr. Sacks, but the treatments you’ve been giving me don’t help. They hurt.” She said to him, begging for him to understand. Shock treatments were Mary Alice’s nightmares. They were immoral and torture.

Each day she was scared of them, she had nightmares of them. They involved being strapped to an uncomfortable gurney, unable to move. They involved having wires attached to your head. They involved burns where the wires were. They involved breaking bones because of the flowing of electricity, or needles shoved deep within the tissues of her skin to stop the bones from cracking. They involved shaking uncontrollably, painful convulsions making her writhe in pain due to the current surging through her body, unnatural. They involved a buzzing sound that was painful to her ears. It just involved pain. They stunted her growth and prevented her raven black hair from growing back fast.

“I know, Alice. But I can’t do anything-I tried. Until those visions go away…” his voice trailed off.

“The visions are a part of me, they won’t go away.” She knew she was stuck in here forever. She was stuck within the walls of her personal dark abyss. Why was she being punished for something that was a part of her? For something that she wasn’t in control of? The visions came when they came, they couldn’t be turned off nor on, no matter how much she wished them to.